Create a Marketing Plan & Grow Your Standout Business

Lesson 23 of 35

Start with the Sale in Mind

Create a Marketing Plan & Grow Your Standout Business

Lesson 23 of 35

Start with the Sale in Mind

Lesson Info

Start with the Sale in Mind

Start With The Sale in Mind. Start with the sale in mind, not the webinar, not the blog post, not all of the social media that you're going to do in your marketing campaign. I want you to start with the sale in mind, and why? Because marketing is easier when you reverse engineer the process. If you start by planning out a whole bunch of social media and a whole bunch of blog posts and a whole bunch of videos that you're going to do, and then try and work your way to the sale, it gets really confusing. You wouldn't think so, it seems like start step one, go to step two, go to step three and that that should feel good, that should be an easy progression but it does not work that way. Planning anything in your business doesn't work that way. I am a huge fan of reverse engineering from what you want to where you actually need to start. That's what we're going to be doing today. We're going to start with what you want which is the sale and then we're gonna figure out all the steps before th...

at that need to come into play so that you can feel more confident, more assured of that end result, not just one sale, but all the sales you want. And now, we can dive right into this process because we have all of the information that you need. Doing that information gathering part of the process, thinking about the assets that you already have at your disposal, thinking about who your target customers are, really nailing all of those different building blocks. So you see from all sorts of different angles, all different perspectives, your customer's real problem, their goals, the desires that they have, the pain points that they're suffering from, their values, all of those aspects, that gives us all the information that we need. It's so, so, so important to spend real time in that information gathering phase. A lot of people wanna skip that. I'd love to skip it too, it takes time, it takes real work, it takes thinking. But, when you do that, when you get that right, when you prioritize that prewriting, that thinking, that information gathering, the whole rest of the process goes really fast. And that's what we're gonna demonstrate today. I'm gonna be doing it with some of the studio audience members that we have here, so you can see live examples of how this actually works. The truth is you spend a day on this, you can get a campaign done easily. In fact, we can speed this process up even more than we have today, but we're gonna slow it down, we're gonna use some live examples, I'm gonna demonstrate each step of this process. So I want you to remember back toward lesson one, maybe it was lesson two, where I talked about there's really three parts of any marketing campaign. It starts with brand awareness, associating your brand with the customer's problem, their pain point, the itch they're trying to scratch. So that they start to recognize, oh, Lynette, Lisa, Michelle is someone I can come to to get this problem solved. That's the first part of any marketing campaign, you have to build that awareness. The second part of your marketing campaign is actually getting people to raise their hand and say yes, I resonate with that problem, I feel ya, this is something I need or I want that solution. That's lead generation. That's getting people, interested people, people that are really on the verge of buying to identify themselves. Wouldn't that be great, to have that built into every single campaign where people will say, "Yeah, I need that," before you've even presented an offer to them? And then finally, the last part of every campaign is conversion. That's actually moving people from just raising their hand and saying yeah, I need that to handing over their credit card information or getting out their wallets and actually buying, closing the sale. So brand awareness, lead generation, conversion. When we start with the end in mind, it means we have to start with conversion. Again, so many business owners, so many marketers want to like wait until the last minute, this is like the last thing on their list, it's figuring out how or why people are actually gonna buy. When you figure out why people are going to buy in the first place, building the whole rest of the campaign becomes so much easier, so much easier. Now, we're gonna utilize a lot of the tools that we worked with yesterday as we plan out this process. It wasn't just fun, it wasn't just conceptual, I thought it was fun anyway, you might not have thought it was fun. These are real tools that you can use to help you craft these campaigns much more quickly. So remember this, this is our customer awareness spectrum. Really, really good customers think about their problem in different ways. Some of them are completely unaware of what their real problem is. Some know what their problem is but don't know how to solve it. Some know what the solution is but haven't chosen a particular one yet, and then finally some people actually know about your product and about your brand. Those people are few and far between, let's be frank, so let's focus in on the rest of this spectrum. But, when we start with conversion it means we actually get to start where you guys are most familiar, in the product-aware part of the spectrum. We're thinking about people who are aware of the real solution, people who need to be made aware of your product, how your product is the right solution for them. And when we do that, we start with why people will buy what you're selling, the real reasons they are going to move from interested to buying. So I want you to think about as we get started here, a sales page you've really liked or responded to recently. Why, what is a sales page that you've really liked or responded to recently? And when I say sales page, I simply mean anything online that is devoted to getting you to buy something. It might be a product page, it might be a long-form copy page, it might be like the example that I showed you yesterday where it's kind of a short compact product page for a physical product. Can you guys think of any examples of, Senta?
Boom.
Okay, what's Boom?
Boom... (low chatter)
Ooh, yes.
So, it's a product, products put together by a woman who's in her 60s, and they're skin products.
Okay.
And I, like by the time I had read her sales page and her sales pitch about positive aging, and, I was like I would have kissed her feet and bought anything and everything that she sold, and I was so taken that I had to stand back and go, "Ah, it's just skin products for," you know? But I came back and bought.
Yes, okay, perfect. So that is such a great example, thank you so much. I'm gonna have to check it out because I want to kind of add it to my file. But speaking of adding it to files, anytime you identify a sales page, a product page that really speaks to you like that, don't just buy the product, take a screenshot of it. And take a screenshot, don't just save the URL because you never know when that product page is gonna change. Remember yesterday, and I'm gonna show you again in here in just a second, I put up the Madison Reed landing page and I was like yeah, I went back there yesterday and it's different (laughs). It's still equally good, but these things change all the time. So if something is really calling out to you, make sure you take a screenshot and put it in a file somewhere on your computer. You can always come back to it later and do what we're just about to do with it at a later time. But any time something catches your eye like that, make sure you're documenting it. That's what great marketers do, great marketers are all the time on the lookout for examples of things that they can play with and copy from and use as inspiration. So make sure you're keeping a file of those things. Anyone else see a product page recently that just really caught, shouted out to them, Michelle?
Yeah, Ashley Ambirge of The Middle Finger Project has this email template pack for difficult conversations. So she tells you how to handle scope creep, if somebody emails and says, "Hey, what are your prices?" She has all of these different templates that you can use to handle difficult conversations, and we've all had that experience where we spent like an hour, hour and a half writing an email to a client, because we're like, "I have to tell you some bad news "and I don't know how to do it." And so, she's already thought through it so you can just use it and it makes it so easy and I just loved it, because I just resonated with how am I gonna say this in an email, and having a starter was amazing. And so, she just captures that perfectly on her sales page.
Yeah, so what was it about the sales page? Was there a headline that really grabbed you, was it a story that she told?
It was actually a lot of the testimonials because they really told the story of like, my client had all of this scope, I'm designing a website and all of a sudden they wanted an e-commerce site and then they wanted this other thing and I had to tell them no, but I didn't want to ruin the relationship and so I pulled the template for that and created an email. And I just was like, "Oh, well, that's awesome." (laughter) That sounds great.
Yeah, I love that, I love that. Yesterday, we mentioned, I've mentioned very briefly that testimonials can really be used to reinforce great copy, but you can also just kind of substitute testimonials. We're playing right now in the co-commercial sales page with actually using longer form testimonials that make the case. Instead of us making the case we'll let our members make the case. And one project that I want to do, 'cause it's totally an aside but it's totally related as well, one project I want to do when I get home is actually having our community manager use the building blocks to source testimonials and build a sales page entirely written by our members, instead of written by me. And so, that's such a great example of you don't actually have to know what to say, if you know that you've got a testimonial that fits building block three, and you've got a testimonial that fits building block seven and you've got a testimonial that fits building block nine. You can write your copy around the testimonial or just let the testimonial speak for itself. So, not only does, it sounds like she had just a great way of kind of sharing what this product was but she really utilized testimonials to tell the story. I love that. Okay, so again every single time you run into a sales page that really speaks to you, what are you gonna do? Screenshot, yes. Make a screenshot, put it in a folder, start, we call it a swipe file. Start your swipe file now if you don't already have it because now you have a system for actually putting that swipe file to use. It's not just there sitting pretty on your computer, it's something that you can use. So let's take a look again at how we're going to use it. So, this is our Madison Reed example, remember it's a e-commerce hair color company. And again, this sales page is so good and it's such a great example of a short form but really informational physical product sales page. Now, you can totally copy the same idea with a service or with a SaaS or with a digital product but this is for a physical product. So again, let's take a look. In building block three, sorry, with the headline you've got building block three represented here in terms of your after. Then you've got building block seven where we're talking about the customer's personal values. In the last bit here, we've got block number four talking about past failures or fears. The next part of the sales page, we've got block number six showing why this is the right offer, contrasting it actually against an alternative, that's building block number eight, so we got a little bonus there as well. And this is the last bit of the sales page, oh sorry, the second to last bit of the sales page, block number eight, overcoming all of those objections. Remember, objections are all the reasons people give you for not buying right now. They might be interested in the product, they might like the idea of it but they give you this laundry list of reasons, or even just one compelling reason, now isn't the right time to buy. So they're overcoming that. Again, using testimonials to reinforce everything they've just said, and then finally leaving off with building block number one, the ultimate goal. That's the sales page, that's how I've analyzed this. You can analyze anything in that swipe file I just mentioned using this same system. You're gonna start seeing building blocks everywhere now. Every time you land on a sales page, you're gonna say, "Oh, that's building block three. "Oh, that's building block five. "Oh, that's building block seven." Same thing when you get a sales email, or even just a regular marketing email. You'll say, "Oh, that's building block five, "that's building block nine." And so your brain is gonna start to become this marketing analysis machine. And as soon as your brain becomes a marketing analysis machine, you become a much, much better marketer. So when you start doing this analysis, what you can actually create for yourself is a template. And so, by templating out that sales page, just pulling out each of those blocks that I just showed you, you can create a guide for building your own sales page. Make sense? This guide then allows you to plug and play from your building blocks into a draft, a first draft, a spit draft of your sales page. So you can actually build it really, really fast. You don't have to start at the beginning and right right right right right right right until you get to the end, you don't have to deal with blank page syndrome, you plug and play, put the thing together and then you make it sound good. Does that sound good? Cool, and this is just one example. Any sales page that you love, any product page that you love on the internet is now fair game for being turned into your very own template. You now have the tools to do this for yourself. I have these templates, when you purchase the class, you get a whole bunch of templates from me but you don't actually need them, you can do this yourself and it's really fun if you're nerdy like me. Alright, so let's actually put this to the test. What do I mean when I say, "Alright, now it's just plug and play?"

Class Description

Marketing your small business can feel like throwing spaghetti at the proverbial wall.

You try all the things you’re “supposed" to do (blogging, making videos, posting to social media…) and you try to keep up with the “hot new trends” that promise to change the way customers find you.

You spend tons of time and energy—and probably some money too. And after all that…

You wonder whether it’s really paying off or not. Is your business really growing? Or is it just your workload…?

Marketing isn’t something you want to mess around with. You want confidence. You want to know it’s working. And, perhaps most importantly, you want to know exactly how you can accelerate your success once you get it right.

Most business owners lack 2 essential pieces of the marketing puzzle. These 2 missing pieces keep them from fully utilizing all the effort they’re already putting into marketing while also keeping them from discovering just how rewarding (and fun) marketing can be.

The first essential piece is a plan. That plan needs to help you be productive, efficient, and decisive. It can ever bring focus and clarity to the whole way your business operates. This class has that covered.

The second essential piece is a solid messaging foundation. The difference between your campaigns and the ones that really, truly pay off isn’t ad spend, hot new trends, or expertise—it’s a message that connects with exactly the right people. This class gives you a system for creating that message every single time.

Join bestselling Money & Life instructor and CoCommercial founder Tara Gentile for a 2-day class on creating the marketing foundation and plan you need to grow your standout business.

By the end of this class, you will be able to:

Build a year-long marketing calendar so you’re never caught off guard by your business’s marketing needs

Quickly and confidently prepare an effective marketing message for a product or service using a foundational set of building blocks that turn so-so campaigns into money-makers

Create a schedule and plan for your marketing campaign using multiple channels, such as email, social media, blogging, or video, so you know you’re getting your offers in front of the right people

Design a system for your marketing campaigns that can be optimized and automated so that you can spend less time on the hands-on work of marketing

Best of all, you’ll have a replicable system you can use for every campaign and every year to feel completely confident in your marketing.

Sharon

Tara, the information you delivered in this class is invaluable. I am in the launching stage of my business, and I know I need to market my business and services and I know I need to write a plan, but I didn't know how to do it. Instagram, content upgrades, Facebook, email marketing, webinars, blogging, etc. etc., I know it all. But I just couldn't get my head around how to truly use marketing campaigns for my business, and especially for my services, to reach my ideal client, help my ideal client and to reach my ideal income.
You explained the why behind marketing campaigns and you showed us how to create a marketing campaign from A to Z. The whole sha-bang!
You gave me the knowledge and inspiration in how to market my services, how many people I ideally want to reach and above all, a framework I can use time and time again to create a marketing campaign. I purchased the class right after seeing the live broadcast so I can use this class for planning all my next marketing campaigns. You clarified a lot and I am much more confident (and so much more less stressed haha) in creating a marketing campaign plan that works for my business and services. I learned a lot! Thank you! P.S. Love the hot seats.

Susan Best Jones

Tara, I love your creative live events I always learn so much and this time was the same. Perfect timing on this info, it is exactly what I need right now and I feel confident that I can do it! I joined CoCommercial and am excited about that. Thank you, Tara.

MaryAnn

This class is well worth the time! Tara does an excellent job of not only providing a step by step system for creating a marketing campaign, but she provides clear context and insights along the way. This is important so that you're not just going through the motions and crossing your fingers that your marketing will work. She helps you understand the strategy behind the scenes so you can get the most out of the work you put in. I highly recommend this course to anyone considering doing their own marketing, or people who are already doing their own marketing and want to feel more empowered and get better results.